If you missed the last blog post about freshman year, here
it is:
What I learned in
College: Sophomore Year
No community, no ease
of growth
After freshman year, I transitioned from a community chock-full
of deep friendships and life-giving activities to good ol’ Goshen where I was
born and raised. It’s a case of “You don’t know what you got until it’s gone.”
As most college students have learned, summer presents you with two options:
slip back into old habits or forge a new summer lifestyle. Summers can become
spiritual black holes for many. You don’t pursue God as hard. You don’t pray as
much. You don’t hang out with as wholesome friends as you used to. Yes, for a
college kid, the summer can be like a journey through the spiritual desert. I
learned that community is important and seeking God in the desert is even more
so.
God isn’t tied to
location
I went from college life to interning at General Electric.
It was my first real job. I had no idea what I was doing. But I impressed the
interviewers enough to get a 16 dollar an hour job at a well respected company.
I loved working there—and the money was nice too. But it felt strange because
it seemed as if the Jesus inside couldn’t get out. It’s like the workplace felt
spiritually stale, dark, and cold. Was it me? Would I always have to suffocate
the Holy Spirit to fit into the work place? Was God just not as prevalent in
Louisville as he was at CSF and UK? Fortunately, all of these questions were
answered when God burst through my stale religion and taught me that He isn’t
confined to location anymore. Rather, He is hidden inside of people. This was
the first of many lessons about who
God was, not where God was. A friend
of mine always said: “If you feel
farther away from God, who moved? It wasn’t God. It was you.”
Lust enslaves, Jesus
Frees
If you are a female, you might want to read this to know
what men struggle with—or you might not. If you are a man, you might be all too
familiar with this lesson. Sadly, you’ll hear an armada of men admit one common
struggle: lust. For 7 years of my life, I struggled with lust. I was enslaved
to lustful thoughts, pornography, masturbation, and the like. No one knew about
it. There was no way I would admit that to my parents. There was no way I would
admit that to my shift group at CSF. It was my little secret. The thing was, I
thought every man was enslaved to it, but nobody ever talked about it. I just
figured that everyone was like me. The idea of someone living free of
pornography and masturbation seemed ludicrous to me at the time. That’s how
deceived I was. For 7 years, I tried every method I could to stop. I wrote on
my wrists. I kept a calendar of how often I did it to see if I could go longer and
longer without it. I went to extreme lengths to stop, but all of my efforts
failed. To everyone else, I was just a well-groomed, well-fed, good Christian
boy. But to myself, I was a sniveling little hypocrite living a lie. The summer
before sophomore year came around, and it was the same old, same old. I would
‘trip,’ pick myself up, go a little farther, and trip again. It was exhausting.
Fortunately, God had a different plan for my life. One day, a friend of mine
gave me a WWJD bracelet. I figured, “maybe I can keep this on my wrist to stop
this destructive cycle.” I wasn’t very hopeful since every similar attempt up
to this point had failed. But I went with it. That night, I cried out to God
and asked Him to free me once and for all. I was done. I couldn’t take it
anymore. I wanted this thing called “The Holy Spirit” to take over my life. I
knew I couldn’t fix my life. I needed Him to. I wish I could tell you that fire
came out of the ceiling fan and zapped me, but it didn’t. I went to bed tired
and helpless. But a funny thing happened in the ensuing days. I was no longer
regularly consumed with lustful thoughts. I no longer had unquenchable urges to
look at pornography. It was like I had a confidence and power over it. Finally,
I had come in full contact with the Holy Spirit. I was living and breathing
anew. What I finally learned was that I
couldn’t just incorporate Jesus into my life and hope it fixed me. I had to die
and be born again. The old ‘me’ was no longer and the new had come. It was
incredible. I am not ashamed to talk
about it now, because it is a testament to the power of God. I have never known anyone with sexual sin
who had a thriving spiritual life. To the men out there, you have two
options. Option A: Become a slave to the idea of a girl who will do anything
you want to satisfy you sexually. Or, Option B: Become a slave to The Holy
Spirit and, in some cases, find a girl who wants to make you more like Christ.
People are betting millions of dollars that you pick Option A. I hope you’ll go
with Option B. The Holy Spirit is a much kinder master. You can’t just wean
yourself off sexual sin. You have to kill it. Use the sharp double-edged sword
of the Spirit.
God uses
relationships, even if they don’t end in marriage
Going into sophomore year, I was in a relationship with a very
nice Christian girl. We had a fun time together but we had a lot to learn. Long
story short, it didn’t work out. But even though it didn’t end in marriage like
we thought it would, God still used the relationship to cultivate and grow us
both. And because God was the center of it, there were no hard feelings or bad
blood when it ended. Sure there was awkwardness and pain, but I was never angry
at her for it not working out and I’m confident she could say the same. In
fact, the break-up led into an even more growth. My best friend told me: “You
know, that was a good relationship and all, but that was an even better
break-up.” It just goes to show that God uses relationships, even unsuccessful romantic
ones, to grow us and lead us closer to Him. At any point in time, you are either growing closer to God and getting
farther away. There is no in between. Relationships—both joyful ones and
painful ones—are one method God uses to get our attention. Another piece of
wisdom: Date as if your girlfriend/boyfriend could end up marrying your best friend.
You want to be respectful enough that if you were the best man in a wedding
between that girlfriend and your best friend, it wouldn’t be (too) awkward.
Recreational reading
Growing up, I hated reading and writing. I was the math
whiz. The thought of writing a blog post just for fun made me want to puke (ironic,
I know). But something happened to me as I began to grow in Christ that year. I
had a sudden urge to read Christian books. I churned through book after book,
week after week. Video games? No thanks, I’ll be over there reading. I don’t
know what changed, but I can say with confidence that reading books about both
Jesus and great Jesus followers elevated my life to a whole new level. It
started with Mere Christianity by
C.S. Lewis and Crazy Love by Francis
Chan. Next thing I know I’m reading Tozer, Max Lucado, Chip Ingram, Spurgeon,
Brennan Manning, Henri Nouwen, and so on and so forth. The truth is, reading Christian books reminds you of deep
truths and puts you in fellowship with Christ. Books challenge the
intellect and soften the heart. God wants us to have the faith of a child, but
a mind that’s in its fittest, fighting form. If you want to grow in Christ,
pick up a book. It can help you a lot more than trudging through the book of
Deuteronomy. That said, don’t let your books supersede reading the Bible. That’s
like trading the steak for the steak knife.
You don’t have to
wait for permission to do something big
My sophomore year, God told me to do a campus wide clothes
drive. I said, “Okay, but You have to help me.” Needless to say, we packed 25
huge home depot boxes and completely flooded the Lexington Refuge Office. I
learned sophomore year that if I was bold enough, God was generous enough. We
have this idea that we have to have permission to do something big for Christ,
but that’s simply not true. Sophomore year, my friends and I used the resources
at hand to organize a shoe drive (450 pairs of shoes collected), a clothes drive,
Operation Christmas Child (35 boxes collected), Feed My Starving Children Bake
Sale (2000 meals provided), led 50-100 people to Passion Conference (Michael
Rundell more so than me) each year, and much more. Not only that, but we used
the amazing house God gave us to hold huge potlucks (60-90 people everytime),
weekly movie nights (15-30 people weekly), weekly prayer nights (10-30 people),
and so on. Am I saying all of this to brag? Absolutely not! God has taught me
(after many lessons) not to care what others think and that I am nothing
without Him. I am recording all of this just to show what God does with those
who are seeking to serve Him with boldness. God taught me that being a poor
college kid does not exempt me from doing big things for the Kingdom of God. Don’t wait for someone else to ask you to
do something big. Do it yourself. If you succeed, you get to see God rightfully
glorified. If it fails, you learn and God is still glorified.
A post on leadership: http://remyeaton.blogspot.com/2012/09/leadership.html
Pride is a spiritual
cancer
Because God was using me to do some pretty cool things—and I
was single and not lusting for the first time in my life—I allowed some toxic
pride to grow in my heart. Suddenly, I was all about how many people liked my Facebook
status, how many people attended parties that I threw, how many girls liked me
(if any), and any other measure by which a man could be proud of. I let my
heart get away from me. I got lost in trying to woo girls and make as many
friends as possible. Sure I was doing good things, but my heart was beginning
to shrivel. Fortunately, God does what God does best: take me down a few
notches so I stop looking down at other people and have to look up at Him. Pride is the beginning of every sin.
When we start making things about ME,
and not about HIM, our life quickly
falls apart. It’s not until we can give up our self—the very thing that has
made us tired and miserable for all these years—that we can truly find joy in
Him. God brought me low so He could build me up right again. He sat me down and
told me “Stop doing things for me and start seeking me. You can’t do anything to
make me love you more and you can’t do anything to make me love you less. You
could sit at the edge of a dock and drink sweet tea all day and I would be okay
with that. Stop measuring yourself by what you accomplish. Measure yourself by
how close you are to Me.”
We have to come to the point where we can be just as happy
for someone who achieved something great as if we had done it our self. We
should boast in Christ alone. When we truly give up our pride and become
humble, we will bear the fruits of the spirit: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience,
Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness, Faithfulness, and Self-Control.
People are people,
and they all respond to love
God taught me how to love people for who they are and not
what they can do for me. Suddenly, I found myself writing letters to old high
school friends to apologize for my past behavior and to tell them about Christ.
Suddenly, I began seeking freshman from my high school so I could introduce
them to life in a Christian community and not let them get lost in worldly
obsession. Suddenly, I began serving in downtown communities and seeing needy
people as friends, not projects. Suddenly, I began loving people regardless of
whether they were thankful or not. Suddenly, I stopped talking about people
behind their back and started encouraging them to their face (or Facebook). God
taught me that we are all wired to
respond to love. Regardless of whether someone is my coworker, my annoying
neighbor, my local homeless man, my best friend, my teacher, or my nemesis,
they are all people and they all respond to love.
The American Dream is
lame
God opened my eyes to see that the American Dream isn’t all
it’s cracked up to be. One method was Radical
by David Platt. Another was seeing Haiti with my own two eyes. I no longer saw
the world in opportunity and selfish gain, but instead, opportunity to give and
selfless sacrifice. American Christians aren’t normal. We’re the weird ones.
Most Christians around the world give all they have for the sake of the gospel.
We complain when we don’t like the carpet color in our church. God started
moving my heart to see the helpless, the lost, the hurt, the broken, the
downtrodden, the widows, and the orphans. Suddenly, living a luxurious
lifestyle wasn’t justified when millions of people struggle just to make it
another day. Sometimes I’d like to ask
God why there is so much brokenness when He can do something about it. But, I
am afraid He would ask me the same question. We are the method God chose to
heal this world. When we ignore the cry of the helpless, we mock the heart of
Jesus. The Kingdom of God belongs to the lowest in this world. So this idea
that we are supposed to be happy and to bless ourselves is a big and well
advertised lie. We are supposed to be His and bless others.
Singleness isn’t a
sickness
My second semester of sophomore year, I took a vow of
singleness for the whole semester. I was serious about pursuing God and I didn’t
want my fickle heart to get in the way. It’s amazing how you don’t realize how
much you think about girls until you are not allowed to. Suddenly, I had
nothing to think about. I never paid attention in class and I couldn’t think
about girls, so now I had nothing worthwhile to think about except for God. I
strongly recommend that every person who isn’t married to wrestle with the idea
of singleness. In our culture today, we idolize romantic relationships. But Jesus
flips everything on its head and tells us that our greatest romance is with Him,
not each other. God taught me that I didn’t need a girl to be whole. In fact,
it wasn’t until a relationship with a girl would help me glorify God more than
singleness that one should come. Don’t let society convince you that you need
another person to be satisfied. God is the one who satisfies. Your relationship
status does not determine your worth. For about 1500 years, marriage was
considered a cop-out to serving God. The strong were single. Let that challenge
your idea of what serving God looks like. You don’t need to be married to serve
God more.
More on that here: http://remyeaton.blogspot.com/2011/10/marriage-vs-singleness.html
Living the fasting
life
Sophomore year, I learned how to fast. Not many Christians
fast. It’s sort of a confusing topic for most Christians. But I found that when
you take Jesus’ words that “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled” seriously, He comes through. When I literally hunger
for righteousness in my life and others, the Holy Spirit seems to move in
power. Regardless of whether it’s because I am humbling myself or because of
something I simply don’t understand, it creates results. If you’ve never
fasted, give it a try. It will bless your life (and others) more than you
think.
That’s all for my sophomore year. Check out my post on junior
year: Coming Soon
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